“Please talk to me,” he begged. “I think maybe getting it off your chest will help.”
“It doesn’t help, Daw. It makes me relive it.”
“I need to know, Ry.”
“Because you need to decide whether or not you should marry me?” It wasn’t actually a question. I was just stating a fact.
“I am marrying you, Riley Murphy. I love you. But we have been together for over a year, and I know that there is so much that you haven’t disclosed. Why won’t you tell me?”
“Why did I ever get involved with a cop? I should have gone out with Levi. He probably wouldn’t care about my past. But nooo. I had to go fall in love with someone with investigating training.”
“Investigating training?” Dawson said light heartily with a smile. I smiled back. I couldn’t help it. He was just too darn cute.
I took a deep breath. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know everything, but right now I just want you to tell me how you left. What made you decide to leave?”
“Remember that I told you that Rebecca started to go everywhere with Derik and me?”
“Mmhmm.”
“Well, after a few times. Derik stopped stalking me in the library. He was pissed that he couldn’t get me alone anymore, and pretty much pretended that I didn’t exist.”
“Did Derik always drive you?”
“Mostly, I think he was the only one that Drew trusted. Drew gave me a cellphone so that he could track my whereabouts and call when he wanted.”
“Did you drive?”
I snorted. “No. I did get my driver’s license when I turned twenty one. I’m not sure why. I was never allowed to leave without Derik, Rebecca and sometimes Jena, but if I was with Jena, either Derik or Drew himself followed.”
“And Rebecca?” he asked.
“We were in the library right after Drew had agreed to keep her on for one more year. I was looking for a book that I had been waiting to come out. It was the third in a series.”
I smiled, when I noticed that Dawson wasn’t the least bit interested in the book that I had been so excited about.
“Anyway, I looked up, and Rebecca was giving me some sort of strange look. We were never close, like in talking about anything personal. We talked, but she would mostly just listen. I think she was afraid of what Drew would hear.”
“What, Rebecca,” I asked.
“You need to leave, Morgan,” she stated, and for some reason I knew that she wasn’t talking about leaving the library. I feigned ignorance anyway.
“I have twenty more minutes,” I stated.
“You need to leave Drew, Morgan. I am going to help you. We have nine months to get you out of there, and I will be gone. I don’t think I would ever forgive myself if I left and didn’t at least try. I may end up dead, but at least I would die without a guilty conscious.”
“Rebecca, you know that I can’t just leave. I can’t even leave the house without a babysitter. I have nowhere to go. I wouldn’t go back to where I came from. He would just find me.”
“We are going to figure it out. I promise, Morgan.”
I kept looking to Dawson, trying to read his face.
Every time that I did, he leaned in and kissed me.
“So, how did you two scheme up your disappearance?”
“We never talked about it again for a month. Drew had beaten me pretty good one evening, and the next day she brought it up again while she brought me food.”
“Why did he beat you up?”
“I thought you wanted to know how I got out.”
“I want to know it all,” he insisted.
I turned my gaze back to my little mountain that I had been forming from funneling sand through my hand.
“I had to go to another one of his events,” I started with a heavy sigh. I hated Drew’s events, dinner parties, and prospect meetings. I knew what it meant. I was never going to make it through one of his engagements without messing up. He knew it. He thrived on it. He knew that we would come home, and he would play his sick games with me. That was really the only time that he raised a hand to me. It was inevitable. I would screw up somehow.
“I was having my hair and makeup done when he came into to check on my progress. He was rushing me, or the stylists, I guess. I wasn’t intended to go to this particular event. I overheard him telling someone that I wasn’t feeling well, and I wasn’t going to be able to make it. He then went on to suck up to whoever was insisting that I be there.”
“I’m actually looking forward to this night,” he whispered close to my ear, holding his hand around my throat while he glared at me through the mirror with a warning.